


Her Fathers

by Miss_M



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Compliant, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 15:17:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7273330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abigail learns different things from her fathers. She learns about masks and trust and subterfuge. She grows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Abigail Lecter

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing.

Whenever she can, during field trips or after lacrosse, Abigail stops at McDonald’s, sneaking burgers and milkshakes the way other girls at school sneak cigarettes, diet pills, boys. She goes alone, hunches over her tray and lets her hair hide her face while she wolfs down her food, her back to the plate-glass windows rather than risk being seen in the street with a cheap milkshake.

She suspects her father knows anyway, despite her efforts to floss in the McDonald’s toilet and brush her teeth as soon as she gets home. Few things get past her father, his intuition is why he is famous in his profession, why other men’s trophy wives hang all over him at recitals and concerts, batting eyelashes and tilting facelifts up for his approval while they try to wheedle dinner invitations out of him. Abigail stands just outside his circle of admirers, in the black sequined dress and tight shoes her father picked out, and rolls her eyes so her father will see, but the women making up to him like sly kittens will not. 

“I am always here for you, Abigail,” he says afterward, when they are home, alone, so she knows it’s not just a platitude, as it would be coming from other people. 

He never says anything real to Abigail, though, not about her eating junk food or anything else important. Whenever he tries a new recipe, he waits for Abigail to take the first bite, watches closely for signs of her appreciation, her savoring the flavors and taking in the effort and refinement which went into the concoction. He never says anything then either, just gives Abigail his crooked, close-lipped smile, and picks up his knife and fork. 

He doesn’t really care about whether Abigail is enjoying the food. What matters is that he’s fed her only the finest dishes, dressed her in the best clothes, sent her to the most prestigious schools. Because he was once an orphan and had to leave his home and live with strangers, he wants everything to be just so. Everything including his daughter: hair appointments every other week, designer jeans, monogrammed school supplies. 

“If you wish to say something, Abigail, the best strategy is simply to let the words out,” he says when she gets into a mood, so she can’t even get properly mad at him. 

Sometimes Abigail wonders whether her mother lived up to her father’s expectations. He never mentions her, so Abigail is free to imagine the wildest possibilities. Her mother was a prostitute her father picked up one night while drunk. She was a close relative, that’s why her father left Europe. She was a patient. In her imaginings, her mother wears Abigail’s face, since Abigail hardly resembles her father. The hairs on Abigail’s arms stand up, her skin thrills to imagine it all. 

The girls who come over, not really her friends, tell Abigail in hushed, excited voices how hot her father is, which is just beyond gross. Abigail doesn’t look like him, except a little around the eyes, and her worst secret are her furtive trips to McDonald’s. Unlike her father, who’s often absent for long stretches of time, never offers an explanation or invites questions when he returns, looking sleek and immaculate as ever. 

“Abigail,” he says over breakfast after one of his absences, “shall we invite Dr. Bloom and some of our other friends to dine with us tomorrow evening?” 

It’s not really a question, since his mind is already made up. They don’t really have friends, and Dr. Bloom isn’t her father’s girlfriend, Abigail is pretty sure, though sometimes she wishes Dr. Bloom were, so her father would be normal, more like other girls’ dads. Her questions and objections have already died on her tongue, so all Abigail can do is nod. 

Abigail knows she is precious to her father. She just doesn’t know if she is indispensable or irreplaceable, like his Henry Moore statuette or his Second Empire dining set. 

Once, when Abigail was six, her father caught her playing with his Rolodex of hand-written recipes, coppery cursive on heavy parchment. She was puzzling out the words and pretending to cook, using the air as her pots and pans and chopping board, because Hannibal Lecter considered a plastic toy kitchen beneath his daughter. 

She has never seen her father so angry, before or since, and she never did find out why that Rolodex was his taboo, the one locked door the handle to which Abigail wasn’t even allowed to try.


	2. Abigail Graham

Abigail’s earliest memories are of angry red welts caused by mosquito bites on the bayou, her father spreading a thick white cream with a chemical smell over them, to make them stop itching. That, and the sight of the Great Lakes under thick green ice, the shores snowed over and slippery, the cold nipping at her face and making it difficult to breathe. 

She was light enough to go skating on the lake ice, but her father would never let her go alone, and he was a terrible skater. He taught Abigail ice fishing as soon as she was strong enough to hold a fishing pole, taller than she was back then, and old enough to sit still for more than two minutes at a time. Abigail learned very young that patience and dedication are important, more powerful than her desire to make snow angels or build an igloo or cross Lake Michigan dragging a dead branch behind her instead of a trail of breadcrumbs, in case she got lost. 

Now she’s nearly grown up, she and her dad don’t talk while they fish, or Abigail talks and her dad listens. He’s good at that. Her lab partner, a blonde girl names Ashley, told Abigail once that her dad is kinda weird, but he’s kinda cool too. Then she added, with a smile which shows her dimple, the smile she must have rehearsed in front of her bathroom mirror, that he’s kinda hot too. 

Abigail made a face at that, but she didn’t give Ashley the satisfaction of denying any of it. 

Her dad joined the Arlington County P.D. when Abigail entered first grade, so they couldn’t keep moving every six months. 

“Not ‘couldn’t,’ Abigail,” he corrected gently, his glasses reflecting the hurricane lamp they used until the electrical company turned on the power in their new apartment. “So we wouldn’t move so often. Children need stability and thrive on routine,” he added after a brief pause. Even at six years of age, Abigail knew that he’d read that in one of his dog-eared parenting books picked up at yard sales in Wisconsin or some second-hand bookstore in Louisiana.

When her dad can’t sleep because of a case and takes the dogs out in the middle of the night, Abigail stumbles out of her bed, pulls on her robe and slippers, the ones her dad mentions need to be replaced on those rare occasions when he notices them, and busies herself making a very early breakfast. By the time her dad returns, she has the dogs’ food bowls topped up, coffee brewed, and eggs and sausage ready in a pan on the stove.

“Abigail, you need to sleep,” her father complains softly while the dogs roil around Abigail’s knees, a welter of tongues and tails. 

“I don’t mind,” she replies. “It’s, like, nearly lunchtime in Europe!” And her father takes off his glasses to polish them on his flannel shirt, looks her in the eye for just a moment, and smiles. 

When the cases he works get bad enough that Abigail hears him running the washing machine in the middle of the night, so she won’t find his sheets sweat-soaked in the morning, she lies in her bed, knowing her dad knows she’s awake and listening, and thinks about the two of them running away. Abigail’s mom and dad met in Louisiana, were married in Wisconsin, and she died in Louisiana, soon after Abigail’s birth in a town in western Kentucky, midway between the two. 

Maybe they should try someplace new.

“What about Florida?” Abigail suggests casually, over another early breakfast. It’s next to impossible to hide anything from her father, which can get really annoying, but it spares them the tiresome dance of ‘but what about your friends, but what about your school and my work?’ 

Instead, her dad jumps straight to the gist of the matter. “What’s in Florida?” he asks.

“Old people,” Abigail fires back readily. “And boat motors in urgent need of fixing.”

If she were younger, her dad might warn her not to sass him. As it is, he merely glances at her over his glasses and sips his coffee, shaking his head at Winston, who’s new enough to the family to believe he can wheedle extra food off the table.


	3. Abigail Hobbs

Abigail’s mother is there, of course, in family photos, driving Abigail to school and the mall, moving around the kitchen or brushing her hair in the master bedroom, which Abigail used to see as an abode of mysteries when she was a child. Now that she’s almost an adult, she observes the door to her parents’ room with a mixture of revulsion and curiosity which makes her feel tawdry, like an old tinsel crown. A princess costume wouldn’t make her a princess.

Abigail’s mother is there, but it’s always been she and her father, a world unto themselves.

The days when he has time to drop Abigail off at school, if the construction sites where he works are close enough to their home, remain special. Becoming a teenager has not worn out the thrill of having her daddy drive her, while most other kids have their own cars or pointedly ignore their parents on carpool duty. The days when Abigail brings him lunch are even better, for her dad never lets her leave without sharing his sandwiches and chips and apple slices with her. Abigail is amused to notice that working men and schoolkids eat the same kind of food. 

She was six when her dad took her hunting for the first time, let her hold a rifle, sight down the long, heavy barrel he steadied for her with his broad, strong palm, let her pull the trigger. She missed that time, and she cried a little, out of shame at her failure and fear of her father’s disappointment.

“Don’t cry, Abigail,” her father said. “Watch, learn, and you’ll catch her next time.”

Abigail shot her first hare when she was six and a half, her first doe when she was ten. She owned her own rifle by then, and she learned to watch and wait for her moment. She got good at it. By the time she grew nearly as tall as her father, she almost never missed.

She doesn’t miss that something is off, even if she couldn’t say what, if anyone asked or Abigail felt like talking about it. It’s something in her father’s eye, the way he turns his head when girls with dark hair and pale skin walk past. Abigail would have been grossed out if any of her friends’ fathers looked at her like that, but this is different. This is her daddy, and he isn’t that kind of man. 

“Honoring the prey gives it meaning,” her father says as he watches her skin, and gut, and quarter. He nods, his eyes crinkling with approval, better even than his slow smile. “Words don’t change reality, Abigail. Only acts have substance.”

What Abigail learns from her father is not how to hunt. She learns the relative value of conscious thought during a hunt. A name could stay her hand at the wrong moment. Wondering if a doe had young or a hare was in pain would throw her aim off just when she should be ready.

She doesn’t think about anything which would make it impossible for her to pull the trigger, turn her from hunter to prey. Easy pickings. Abigail knows better, she learned better at her daddy’s knee. He taught her everything he knows because he loves her. He made her learn how to hold a skinning knife when she was seven, despite her tears, because he wants to prepare her. 

She kept crying and making heaving noises until the knife in her little hand, enveloped in her father’s bigger, rough-skinned one, cleaved through the doe’s soft pelt as cleanly as through water. Then, Abigail made no sound, she forgot to blink, so great was her wonder. 

“You see, Abigail?” her father whispered in her ear, his warm breath stirring her hair. “She gives it all up, and we have to honor that. Respect the prey, and you will always catch it.”

Being the hunter means having to blend in and wait, until the time is just right. Until it’s safe. Trusting oneself to wait, moving always downwind, making only as much noise as is needed to steer prey in the desired direction: the snap of a twig, the rustle of last year’s leaves. The appearance of spontaneity conceals the hunter’s intent. 

Abigail loves her father. She does. Nobody’s ever told her that love and trust are not always two halves of a whole.


End file.
